As the proverbial crow flies, the town of Groesbeck, in Limestone County, lies in the central Texas plains just about 40 miles due east of Waco. It's the kind of country that hard-nosed dirt farmers have scratched out an honest living on for more than 150 years, but it doesn't necessarily evoke the sort of images that many people associate with bluegrass music.

Groesbeck is, after all, just about as deep into the heart of Texas as it gets, and a long, long way from the hills of Kentucky.

To Karl Shiflett, though, Groesbeck has been home for most of his 44 years, and if the folks who have flocked to hear him and his Big Country Show on the festival circuit over the last 3 years have trouble thinking of their music as bluegrass, he won't argue with them.

"We've always referred to our music as country music and not necessarily bluegrass. It's kinda like Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. That's the way they referred to their music."

Shiflett is recalling the period of the late 1940's and early 1950's (before the term "bluegrass" even came into widespread use) when the music that Flatt and Scruggs and their former boss, Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers and others were making was as much a part of the whole fabric of country music as that of Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Hank Thompson.

"It's not necessarily that I have anything against the word 'bluegrass,'" he says. "It's just that the trend of bluegrass music nowadays is so far from where bluegrass started, I'd almost not even want to be called a bluegrass band...it's just like the change in country music to what it is now, it's just so far from where it started...I wouldn't even call most of the country music that they're playing now 'country music'."

Bluegrass fans, though, have certainly warmed up to Shiflett and his band since the release of their self-titled debut on Rebel Records in 1999.

The album was critically praised, but it was the buzz created by their sensational appearance as a showcase act at the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) convention that year that has made them one of the most sought-after acts on the festival circuit and has taken them all across the US and Canada).

The group's second Rebel release, "In Full Color," is out in January, and Shiflett couldn't be happier.

"I've had the band since '93, and we had worked the festival circuit, but I never had any kind of national release on any of our recordings. I was with a label called Atteiram Records...and basically all they ever done was provide us with tapes to sell off the table."

Although part of the appeal - "retro" has been the favorite description of many critics and reviewers - of Big Country Show is their true-to-tradition treatment of classic bluegrass and country tunes, they're not just playing to nostalgia.

Like the first Rebel disc, the new album includes a healthy sampling of the band's originals, but this time, Shiflett says, the production has tried to emulate the "single-mic" sound of their knockout stage shows.

"There's eight original songs on this album, so there's a little bit more original material here. One thing we done different that I really wanted to publicize was that we recorded it live around an RCA 77 ribbon microphone, and we done it like we do on stage, except I took a couple other mics and placed one on each side to capture the stereo effect. But basically, we recorded on the one mic, done live, no overdubbing, so I was real proud of that. It turned out real well."

Born in Longview, Texas, Shiflett began gravitating to bluegrass as a child when the entire family would listen to the weekly Opry broadcasts, and Bill Monroe became one of his favorite performers. He began hearing live bluegrass after moving to Groesbeck in the late 1960's.

"My first exposure to the music (was) back in the '60's. They had a fiddle contest here at the courthouse square every year. They still do, and they had live bluegrass bands the first year I went, when I was about 9 or 10 years old."

He proved himself to be a quick study not only as an instrumentalist (guitar, banjo, mandolin and fiddle), but he also showed a keen eye for the stylistic elements that made classic country music as entertaining in person as it was on radio and some of it he picked up from television.

Shiflett became particularly fascinated with banjo player David "Stringbean" Akeman, Monroe's banjo player prior to Scruggs and among the original cast members of "Hee Haw."

He stayed with music through his high school years (including radio appearances in Waco) and marriage (he and wife Linda were wed in 1979), working as a sideman for well-known bluegrass acts like Bill Grant and Delia Bell, and the Sullivan Family ("My first professional job," he says).

It wasn't until 1993 that he formed Big Country Show and began working toward his vision of fronting a band that would take an audience on a ride back to the Golden Age of Country Music.

"I've always felt that I had something to offer. It's just whether people are ready to accept it or not, and the music seems to kind of go in cycles, you know. The traditional music always comes around at some point or another."

For Shiflett and Big Country Show (Shiflett on guitar, Lyle Meador on mandolin, Jake Jenkins on banjo, Kirk Brandenberger on fiddle and Karl's son, Kris on bass), getting the hard-edged, traditional bluegrass sound of the 1950's down stone cold wasn't enough, and it wasn't even enough to look the part (they are among the sharpest-dressed bands on the bluegrass circuit, though).

Shiflett also wanted the ' audience to experience the thrill of watching a five-piece acoustic band working live before a single microphone, a performance art form that had virtually disappeared with the advent of multi-mic sound systems plugged into 16-channel mixers.

Doing "single-mic" was tricky and to work it close enough to allow each instrument and voice to be properly balanced without feeding back required exquisite timing and judgment from each band member.

Shiflett was convinced it could still be done, but others weren't so sure, and he held off trying it until bluegrass icon Doyle Lawson and his band Quicksilver started doing it around 1996.

"I'd always wanted to do it, and Doyle Lawson was the first to do it, and immediately when he started doing it I started doing it, 'cause I'd always told everybody it could be done...I already knew him, and I called Dale Perry, the fellow that had played bass for Doyle at that time...he was the one that was doing all of it, so he was the person I talked to for technical advice."

Watching Shiflett and Big Country sliding in and out, back and forth around the single mic suggests a specialized brand of choreography, but Shiflett says they had actually been doing it for some time.

"Before we started using one microphone, I was using a similar type of choreography on stage, I was using three microphones on one stand to sing out of, and a mic down below for the guitar...but we would move in and out to sing, basically the same way that we do now, so we're just basically making the same moves we were making when we were using the other system, so it came real natural to us to do it that way, to go the one mic."

For longtime fans of the music, of course, the standard for this type of showmanship is Flatt and Scruggs and their legendary band, the Foggy Mountain Boys, and Shiflett readily tips his own Stetson in their direction, while admitting that it's not as effortless as they make it look.

"I have some old video clips of their television shows, and that was real helpful for us, and of course, I watched Doyle Lawson when he was using his...but basically, I just made it work for us, and I don't think we've ever had a collision on stage. That's what I hear people say, 'Well, I'm afraid to use one mic, I'm afraid we'd run over each other and kill each other,' but we've always been able to do it real smooth."